It’s time to examine your conscience, Prime Minister
In the wake of the synagogue attack, we have heard more words of condemnation from Anthony Albanese and Labor. But over 14 months we have seen no strong action against anti-Semitism – only a retreat from moral clarity.
Moral clarity has become so rare in public affairs that its appearance can hit you in the face like a wet towel. In a powerful social media instant Donald Trump put the monstrosity of Hamas’s hostage outrage front and centre, as it should have been for the past 427 days.
And former Labor defence material minister Mike Kelly warned of dire national security and social cohesion consequences flowing from the Albanese government’s weakness on Israel and anti-Semitism, just hours before the arson attack on a Melbourne synagogue. Kelly called on the Prime Minister to “reset” his “moral compass” for the sake of the nation.
With 97 hostages still unaccounted for in Gaza, Trump demanded their release and threatened dire consequences if that did not happen. In a social media post he declared there would be “hell to pay” if the hostages were not returned before his inauguration on January 20: “Those responsible will be hit harder than anybody has been hit in the long and storied History of the United States of America. RELEASE THE HOSTAGES NOW!”
Given the president-elect is not dealing with rational actors but an Islamist extremist death cult, there is no telling what his demand will precipitate, although he has backed it up by announcing he will appoint Adam Boehler, lead negotiator of the Abraham Accords, as a new hostage affairs envoy.
The moral imperative on the hostages has been clear every day since October 7, 2023, yet most world leaders, advocates and media have all but ignored it.
The taking of these hostages was a war crime that has been aggravated every day they have been held. At least 34 hostages have been murdered, 109 returned in deals, eight have been rescued, three were killed in a tragic mistake by Israeli soldiers, and it is believed 30 or more of the remaining 97 might have been killed.
Among those unaccounted for is an entire family taken from the Nir Oz kibbutz. Terrorists murdered the parents of 32-year-old mother Shiri Bibas, then injured and captured her husband, Yarden, before taking Shiri and her two boys as hostages.
Hamas videos showed Shiri surrounded by Palestinian raiders, terror on her face, as she clutched her nine-month-old son Kfir and his four-year-old brother Ariel while they were taken away. Another video confirmed they arrived in Gaza alive, but there have been conflicting reports about whether they are still alive.
Others unaccounted for include 19-year-olds Daniella Gilboa, taken by Hamas and recognised in a video by the shirt she was wearing, and Naama Levy, last seen with hands tied, bloodied face and soiled track suit pants as Hamas paraded her in Gaza, bundling her in and out of a vehicle at gunpoint. What has befallen these young women does not bear thinking about.
More than a year on, the missing 97 are fathers, mothers, brothers, sisters, sons and daughters who have suffered at the hands of unforgivable evil.
Clearly the retrieval of these people and the protection of Israelis from further harm have been Israel’s top priority.
Yet too many world leaders, the UN, global activists and advocates, and most media have tried hard to unremember the hostages, along with the 1195 people slaughtered on October 7.
Instead they have put pressure on Israel and cited Hamas’s statistics on Palestinian casualties that list most deaths as women and children, drastically underplaying terrorist deaths.
(Even the UN halved the overall number of women and children killed in one overnight data adjustment in May, and Pennsylvania University statistics professor Abraham Wyner deduces that the numbers coming out of Gaza “are at a minimum grossly inaccurate and quite probably outright faked”.)
Our Foreign Minister, Penny Wong, was calling for Israeli restraint in the face of October 7 even before the bodies had been retrieved and identified in southern Israel, while the hostages were still being spirited into their hiding places and days before Israel had launched a counter-attack.
It has been sickening during the past 14 months to hear politicians mention the return of hostages almost as a footnote to statements about the war, instead of being up front as the first and unshakeable precondition of relenting against Hamas.
Most diplomats and nearly all the political left have lost their moral compass on Israel. The Islamist extremists and anti-Western forces have played them like fiddles, winning their support by framing the conflict as one of indigenous people versus colonisers, victims against an oppressor, and even coloured people against whites – all absurdly wrong descriptions.
The fact the main aggressors – Hamas, Hezbollah and Iran – are committed to the annihilation of Israel does not stop the gormless left pretending that the terrorists are fighting for a two-state solution. The Islamist extremist hatred at the core of the Hamas and Hezbollah jihad is not understood or is deliberately ignored in favour of a presumed logical aspiration for land and self-determination.
It is no coincidence that the October 7 outrage occurred as Israel and Saudi Arabia, building on the Trump-era Abraham Accords, were close to normalising relations. But instead of international pressure mounting daily against Hamas (which is responsible for every death in this war, has no chance of winning and deliberately fosters carnage to undermine broader Middle East peace processes), intense diplomatic pressure has been placed on Israel to adopt a ceasefire.
This would amount to Israel leaving Hamas in place, accepting the loss of the hostages, leaving Palestinians under the control of their terrorist masters and awaiting the next act of barbarity.
If Israel had listened to these calls from Australia, Canada, European nations and the UN, Yahya Sinwar would still be alive and running Hamas, while Hassan Nasrallah would still be presiding over a heavily armed Hezbollah on Israel’s northern border, and a string of other Hamas and Hezbollah terrorist leaders would remain alive and active.
Still, here we were, two months into the hostages’ second year of captivity and it took Trump to reassert clear morality on this issue. You do not have to be Trumpian to appreciate this stand; in fact, its impact may be more telling given it comes from an unorthodox populist who seems to see everything through the gargantuan prism of his own ego.
Trump’s striking elevation of good over evil stood out so prominently this week because it contrasted sharply with other efforts.
In the same week, White House incumbent Joe Biden used the last vestiges of his executive power to pardon his son Hunter from a decade of known and unknown criminal offences.
Given the Democrats’ constant refrain about nobody being above the law, and Biden’s insistence he would not invoke a pardon, a clearer case of hypocrisy we have never seen. Where we might expect the leader of the free world to be focused on the fate of innocent hostages and the security of Israel, he has been preoccupied with a family protection racket.
There was a moral counterpoint in Australia, too, with Anthony Albanese and Wong deciding that now was the time to turn on Israel and provide a public relations victory for Hamas.
Overturning a position that has held since the heady days of 2001 when Bill Clinton came close to negotiating a two-state agreement (a deal rejected by Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat), Australia this week voted for a UN resolution demanding Israel withdraw from the Palestinian territories of the West Bank and Gaza.
Nobody bothered to point out that Israel withdrew from Gaza in 2005. And look at how that has worked out.
It was morally reprehensible for Australia to have a change of heart on this resolution now, given Hamas still holds those 97 hostages in Gaza, and considering that the only development driving the shift has been the atrocities committed by the terrorists and the warfare they have triggered.
The Prime Minister and his Foreign Minister rewarded Hamas diplomatically for unspeakable horrors unleashed on innocent victims.
This weakness can only provide implicit encouragement to Islamist extremists at home and abroad. Australia has shamed itself globally, betrayed its commitment to the supremacy of liberal democracies and contributed to a worsening security environment.
Apparently Albanese and Wong believe it may play well with large Muslim populations in some key seats and with young, radical voters enticed by the Greens. Little wonder a Labor defence and foreign affairs heavyweight has called on Albanese to “reset his moral compass” on Israel.
Mike Kelly is a lawyer and former army colonel who served in Bosnia, East Timor and Iraq. He was also a federal MP and minister for defence materiel and is co-convener of Labor Friends of Israel, so he speaks with great experience and authority on these matters, and what he says is damning for the Albanese government.
“The government is putting at risk our national security here, and our social cohesion,” Kelly told me on Sky News on Thursday night, “because it appears as if we are rewarding every new escalated act of violence committed out there by those activists.”
Kelly said we are seeing the evidence of this even at home, with anti-Semitic vandalism and protests – and then we woke to news of the Melbourne synagogue attack.
He argued Labor should align with Trump’s views by promoting a position that says, “We’re not going to take any further steps on this, we’re not going to enter into any further discussions on statehood unless the hostages are released, unless Iran and its galaxy of proxies end their war of aggression which is the key war crime that’s being committed here.”
The former minister talks about Australia’s abandonment of Israel as being “shocking” given our long friendship and “shoulder-to-shoulder” stands against fascism, tyranny and terrorism. “I’d say to Albo, ‘Look mate, reset your moral compass, stand up for something here, the community will reward you for that’,” Kelly says.
He also associates himself with the call by Liberal MP Julian Leeser, also on Sky News this week, for Attorney-General Mark Dreyfus and Deputy Prime Minister Richard Marles to resign over the issue. Leeser’s logic assumes that Marles, as the leading Right faction cabinet member, and Dreyfus, as a Jew, must privately disagree with the government’s position.
Kelly says Leeser speaks from a position of moral strength given he resigned from shadow cabinet over the Indigenous voice. He says: “All of those Labor colleagues of mine need to examine their consciences on this.”
It can never be too late to examine one’s conscience. And it can never be too late to find some moral clarity.
In the wake of the latest attack, we have heard more words of condemnation from Albanese and Labor. But over 14 months we have seen no strong action against anti-Semitism, and only a retreat from moral clarity on the central issues in the Middle East.
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